The Business Press Maven

Return to Article

How to Fix Business Media

Marek Fuchs

Before the day I entered journalism, I worked on Wall Street. That means instead of speaking with expertise on writing or high finance, I should instead be pontificating to you on the topic of woefully misguided career moves.

Pay issues aside, the two fields are actually more similar than most would expect. Both are inordinately focused on the news of the moment, often subservient to the passing thoughts of the day. In journalism, all the day's chaos is tidied up into a convoy of snappy articles, and in high finance, the economic, political and company news streaming out at any one time all somehow condense into individual numbers called stock prices.

But when I was on Wall Street, as a stockbroker and later as a money manager, I had the opportunity to behold business journalism from the perspective that should be enjoyed by any future critic. I was on the outside of journalism -- with a growing appreciation of the craft, but no direct connection or stake in how things had always been done. And I was on the inside of high finance, with a good grandstand seat to see how well the business media captured what was going on around me. From that grandstand, I used to bite my nails to the quick.

Why? Well, reading what the business media put out daily had all the charm of a forced march. I could not understand how so many could be so wrong so often on the very same issues.

Gross domestic product and other government statistics habitually revised would be written about as if they never would be. GDP would be reported at, say, 4.2%. Big hunks of nonsense would be run about the significance of that number, even though it wasn't bound to survive. Sure enough, the revision would come out at, say, 3%, and the business media would do a military about-face to tell the public anew what the economy was like, not mentioning their fast-abandoned first series of ironclad conclusions.

Sometimes it looked like the business media's credo was to snuggle with anyone on a lucky roll. I don't know how many times I saw CEOs canonized in print because their companies had benefited from a good cyclical run, one on which a laboratory monkey could capitalize.

When luck ran its course and the CEO was thrown out, the demise would be covered, but with no larger understanding of what made a good executive vs. what made a bad or charmed one.

As an investor seeking guidance, the business media seemed to have the directional sense of a salad spinner. I vowed to put myself in a position where I could kick the business media in the shins.

So here we are. I write The Business Press Maven column four times a week for TheStreet.com, mostly criticizing and, in the odd, weak moment, praising the business media. It is probably the single easiest gig in journalism, as there's never a shortage of material.

The problem is, the business media keep making many of the same old mistakes. But by giving the business media a well-deserved tweak, I hope I've taught readers how to think for themselves, to avoid the business media's errors and even capitalize on their mistakes.

But where do the business media go from here? Criticism is, of course, an easy game. Offering solutions is much harder, which is why I'll run through the following section a bit more quickly with a ton more modesty.

What I think distinguishes the business media from most other areas of journalism is that those who practice it did not grow up interested in the subject. In one of my other incarnations, I do sports reporting, and this offers a good counterpoint to business media.

Sports reporters, whatever their flaws, almost always grow up obsessed with the subject they cover. Let's face it: Not many business journalists do, and it shows. Journalists grow up interested in sports, politics or the arts, but most people who grow up interested in business are smart enough to earn the money they can in business.

Here's my solution. Though a wall exists between a news outlet's journalistic and business sides, it needs to be scaled in this one circumstance. We need to give business journalists the sort of real-world business experience that will inform their writing for years to come. It might not be working on a trading desk, but even making some sales calls or seeing how a business plan for a new division is structured can only help. This means, that media outlets must send business reporters for occasional rotations on the business side of their operations.

Also, we must formally train business journalists in the history of business. In all its liveliness and utter ridiculousness, business repeats itself in cycles. Anyone who is writing about it must have a sense of what business history is all about. Too often, when a business journalist invokes history, it is merely the last time something similar happened. History's cycles are not that tidy, and a good formal education would teach more journalists that.

An entire separate lesson must be devoted to the enduring difference between journalism and Wall Street. The main difference -- and a major cause of mistakes on the media's part -- is that journalists are concerned with what is happening in that moment. But businesses -- stocks, for example -- are priced on the hunch of what will be.

Business is probably the most complicated field to cover. The issues and markets are not contained. And the business media serve too many masters -- from those in high finance to those interested in personal finance to those interested in the social significance of events in the business world. But that's no excuse for messing up GDP so frequently or for acting like the cast of the gullible when it comes to puff-files of CEOs.

My best area of expertise is on how to segue from a field that pays a lot to one that pays peanuts. But I also know that the fields are similar enough that they can do better for each other.